Adam Machanic : developers, code sampleshttp://www2.sqlblog.com/blogs/adam_machanic/archive/tags/developers/code+samples/default.aspxTags: developers, code samplesenCommunityServer 2.1 SP2 (Build: 61129.1)Code Camps and Revisiting a Common Themehttp://www2.sqlblog.com/blogs/adam_machanic/archive/2007/09/29/code-camps-and-revisiting-a-common-theme.aspxSat, 29 Sep 2007 19:33:00 GMT21093a07-8b3d-42db-8cbf-3350fcbf5496:2744Adam Machanic4http://www2.sqlblog.com/blogs/adam_machanic/comments/2744.aspxhttp://www2.sqlblog.com/blogs/adam_machanic/commentrss.aspx?PostID=2744<P>Today I gave two talks at <A class="" href="http://www.thedevcommunity.org/Events/PresentationList.aspx?id=4">New England Code Camp 8</A>. A fun experience as always, and for those of you who were in my talks and are looking for decks/code, please see <A class="" href="http://sqlblog.com/blogs/adam_machanic/archive/2007/05/11/thank-you-for-attending-today-s-webcast-on-authorization-privilege-and-access-control.aspx">this post</A> and <A class="" href="http://sqlblog.com/blogs/adam_machanic/archive/2007/05/18/another-webcast-thanks-errors-and-exceptions-in-sql-server-2005.aspx">this post</A> from when I did slightly different versions of the same talks earlier this year as MSDN Webcsts. I am not quite ready to publish the decks I used today.</P>
<P>But the topic of this post is not so much the code camp as an observation about what I saw there.&nbsp;Recent posts by both of our resident Andys (<A class="" href="http://sqlblog.com/blogs/andrew_kelly/archive/2007/09/27/double-standard.aspx">Kelly</A> and <A class="" href="http://sqlblog.com/blogs/andy_leonard/archive/2007/07/12/database-professionals-an-enterprise-requirement.aspx">Leonard</A>) share the theme of organizations treating their database staff&nbsp;as&nbsp;next-to-worthless.&nbsp;&nbsp;And developers, in general, seem much more interested in other facets of&nbsp;development than&nbsp;all of that "database stuff." </P>
<P>Today's code camp proved this once again; my two talks were both quite lightly attended, even though I was talking about&nbsp;important issues around data security and exception handling--things that any developer working with data should get. Perhaps it's just me, but the evidence says otherwise: after my talks I peeked into a few others and found a standing room only session on Silverlight and a session on LINQ to SQL&nbsp;that had a comparable number of attendees to what I'd had.</P>
<P>Why is it that data, while&nbsp;the foundation of any business&nbsp;application,&nbsp;is&nbsp;not a draw to&nbsp;the developer masses?&nbsp;How can we&nbsp;ignore the data and instead focus on creating spiffy new UIs (to display flawed data, no doubt)?&nbsp;Perhaps data seems easy--if you know how to write a query and set up an ADO.NET connection, that's all you need, right?&nbsp; Or perhaps data is just someone else's job--just let the DBA or database developer handle it and display anything that comes back, flawed or not. It's not your problem, you're a UI developer. But everyone can't be a UI developer, can they?&nbsp; Someone has to take control of the data.</P>
<P>Bad data can and does lead to project failure. If you're a UI developer you're going to get canned just as quickly as the DBA if you're project is no longer being funded--so if your UI displays bad data,&nbsp;you are&nbsp;<EM>just as guilty as&nbsp;whomever designed the&nbsp;database that returned it</EM>! If you're a business&nbsp;tier developer, you are just as responsible for data validation as the database developer!&nbsp;</P>
<P>Alas, if you're reading this post you're already one of the converted.&nbsp;This is SQLblog.com, so you obviously care enough about your data to read up on it a bit more.&nbsp;But as developers who know the value and importance of data, it is our job to spread the data gospel.&nbsp;Data issues around security, validation, and performance are every developer's&nbsp;responsibility.</P>
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